Microsoft has some good ideas for consoles, but the recent announcements concerning their stance with the Xbox One has me wondering if those ideas ran out. The big one – Used games. They claim that the digital distribution is better and that restricting used games will drive prices down. I’ll admit it worked good on the PC and that consoles are getting closer to the PC than ever before. But – Consoles ARE NOT PC’s.

Old gamers remember taking their NES to their friends house for a sleep over because they only had a Sega Master System (I was the one with the Sega). If they both had an NES, they’d bring a pile of games for the night. Now, with Microsoft’s new strategy, it makes it difficult to bring my console over, as I must bring the Kinect and make sure it’s working, and if it’s longer than 24 hours I need to make sure they have a good, solid internet connection available. If they have a console, I can’t bring my games over to play but I can loan them to them (make sure to do it a few days ahead of time so they have time to download), one at a time. Now, that is old school thinking. I doubt that it happens very often anymore. Except, I still see kids taking games to other peoples houses when they have a sleep over, so it’s not too rare.

Then, you have those kids that mow lawns to be able to afford some cool games. Definitely not enough to buy a few games at full retail price. My kids like taking a $20 bill to Game Stop and buying a couple, maybe 3, used games and coming home and playing them. So do I. I will buy new games, as well, especially if they are some great ones. But, for some (Duke Nukem Forever is a great example), I would NEVER buy new unless they hit the bargain bin at $5, which I seriously doubt a new game would hit that price. Take the used games market away, and that really limits how many games I will buy. That is a big part of the decision when buying a console. I finally bit the bullet and own a Playstation 3 now. There is a large game library that I can go out and pick up fairly cheap. If games were $20 for the older ones and $50-60 for the newer ones with no used game market, I would skip the console all together. But, the used game market pulled me in. They sold the console, a few accessories and several new games (Last of Us comes tonight!).

Finally, the always online requirement. I am always online anyway. But, I do know that sometimes things happen, and they have. Sometimes, the internet is down for more than a day. Sometimes, the Xbox servers have issues and are down. I expect my console to work. When it doesn’t, and it becomes a paper weight. A $500 paper weight. No thank you.

Microsoft – as much as a fan I am, I will not be buying an Xbox One. I wasn’t going to buy a Playstation 4. I was going to continue being a fan boy and support you. But, you pushed me away, and you sold me on the competition. Now, I have a PS4 pre-ordered. It’s about the games. You took those away. I don’t care about TV. I have TV. Sorry, Microsoft. You lost a sale. You want to educate people, fine. But, I’m going to play games while you do that. And judging from various forums, Reddit, Facebook and elsewhere, I’m not alone. We want to play games. We’ll play games online. But, when we unplug the cable – we’ll still play games.

I’m hoping (yet definitely not expecting anything) that Microsoft will make an announcement this summer to backtrack on a few things – Kinect requirement (I don’t want one, drop the price $100 and get rid of it), online requirement, used games restriction. Fix those, and you’ll have a lot more sales. Even with the price higher than the competition, it would be alright. But, a tightly controlled ecosystem at a higher price? You’re not Apple. These aren’t iPads. These are consoles. You can’t be the game changer here.

There is a limit to how far people will go (even us fan boys) to buy the name “Xbox”. I can’t go that far. 

The new features for Windows 8.1 are a nice gesture, but some of the opinions I’m seeing online, some very heated, are saying that’s not enough. I am sure there are still those that want a Windows 95-7 style Start Menu to return, but that will not happen without third party tools. Program Manager (the desktop UI from Windows 3/NT) will not be returning, either, no matter how much people want it to.

I can admit that the new Modern UI interface takes some getting used to, and has some issues (I can name quite a few, depending on the platform). Microsoft is doing their best to improve the interface and make it easier for people with problems. Love it or hate it, Modern UI is sticking around. At least there are some notable changes with Windows 8.1, but will they be enough to sway those that detest Windows 8 and the new interface?

What’s different with Windows 8.1? The Verge has a nice write up on some of the changes. Some of the major ones that I know I’ll like – improved lock screen (picture frame style image rotation, similar to iPad), updated Live Tiles, Start button (not a Start Menu, just the visual cue to take you to the Start Screen), more personalization on the Start Screen…. A good bit of changes, and they are very welcome by me.

Microsoft is also borrowing some more ideas from Windows Phone 8, introducing new large and small Live Tiles — the animated app icons that appear on the Start Screen — in Windows 8.1. On the Weather Tile you can now see the weather in three different cities and three days of forecasts displayed at the same time. For apps like Calendar, it will display your entire calendar for the day, and third-party apps like Twitter will be able to display additional information. "You still get notifications, you still get posts, you still get counts on them, but they take up one-quarter of the space of the tiles we had with Windows 8," explains Jensen Harris, a director of the Windows User Experience Team at Microsoft. Desktop apps will also use colorful tiles by default, and developers will have the option to create richer versions.

Microsoft has started to implement the Lync and Skype integration. For those that use Lync at their offices, this is a great addition. This makes me want to install Lync on my home server (Server 2012) to try this out. I may need to upgrade my server to support more of these cool things Microsoft is releasing!

As of today, according to Microsoft, users of the two services can now:

• Add Skype contacts to Lync and vice-versa, enabling presence sharing
• Initiate audio calling and instant messaging between Lync and Skype

Microsoft takes a jab at Siri in it’s new Windows 8 tablet advertisement. Honestly, I couldn’t agree more. The points they are making are very valid. Windows 8 tablets are great to get work done, whereas the iPad is great at other things (consuming media, light gaming).

After many rumors, speculations, guesses and conspiracy theories, the Xbox One has finally been announced and some features have been thrown at the gamer. What really sticks out to me? The console itself looks very elegant and more like a piece of AV equipment that will fit right in with the rest of my equipment. It doesn’t have the toy look and feel to it like previous consoles have. Second? The new Kinect sensor is quite a bit better all around, and looks like it will play a big part in not only the games, but other features of the Xbox One experience. Third, the controller has been improved over the already great Xbox 360 controller.  Lastly – Blu-ray. This is important in pushing the Xbox One into a real living room device giving it more duties as part of a good AV system.

The games were a small part of the presentation, with not a whole lot of game play shown. The detail was great, and the graphics were improved. But, what really got me was how smooth everything was. The frame rate was high, the animations were very fluid and very detailed and lifelike. Just a great demo for those.

Microsoft has released a FAQ answering a few questions (used games, always online, etc.) to help with some of the rumors. In a few weeks, they will follow up at E3 with more details and more information on the console. Still no word on price, but for a gaming machine with Kinect sensor and a seemingly full featured HTPC? If it’s over $399 at launch, I’ll pass for about a year.

What are your opinions on the new console? Will it compete well with the Sony Playstation 4? Still a lot of information out there, so go check out the Xbox.com site for more details.

Forza 5 demo (not gameplay, unfortunately). Details in the cars are amazing. Still, without actual gameplay footage, I’m going to wait to judge.

Microsoft has launched another shot towards Google, attacking their ‘track everything’ to monetize your information. This has never been a secret with Google. You have always been the product, not the consumer.

Windows Phone 8 OS has leapfrogged Blackberry OS, jumping to 3.2% market share. While it may not beat the 75% that Android has or the 17.3% that Apple has with it’s iOS for iPhone and iPad, it’s still very good. As a Windows Phone owner (also have an iPhone for work), it is one of the best cell phones I have ever used. Never a single crash, bug, reboot. It’s been a perfect phone.

Windows Phone posted the largest year-over-year gain among the leading operating systems, more than doubling its size from a year ago. Nokia was largely responsible for driving these volumes higher, accounting for 79.0% of all Windows Phone shipments during the quarter. Since Nokia began shipping Windows Phone devices, the company has shipped a total of 20.3 million units and grown the footprint worldwide to include address multiple market segments. Meanwhile, other vendors continue to offer Windows Phone devices, but mainly as an alternative to their signature Android devices. Still, the gains made by Windows Phone demonstrate both end-user demand and OEM support.

Windows 8.1, formally known as Windows Blue, has been announced as a free upgrade for Windows 8 users through the Windows Store. A public preview of the new OS update will be available on June 26th, which coincides with the Build Developer Conference. The new preview will be available for both standard Windows 8 as well as Windows RT.

During her remarks today, Tami reiterated our goal of delivering continual updates to create a richer experience for Windows customers. Windows 8.1 is part of that and continues the journey we first began with Windows 8 last fall. Windows 8.1 will help us to deliver the next generation of PCs and tablets with our OEM partners and to deliver the experiences customers— both consumers and businesses alike —need and will just expect moving forward.

All those rumors that have been flying about the newest Xbox, code named Durango, will be proven right or wrong on May 21st, when Microsoft officially reveals the newest generation of Xbox. What are you looking forward to? Hopefully, we can see some game play of some of the newest games.

For those Microsoft Excel experts, this is something that might get your eyes popping. This is an amazing new preview from the Excel team called GeoFlow. Very interesting, and watching this video I was blown away. Excel never ceases to amaze me with some of it’s more advanced features. I’m far from an expert, but this looks like something that I could work with a lot.